8 posts tagged “fred thompson”

The latest US Life on Mars was another adapted UK story, as I had expected from last week’s promo, but the plot was changed hugely. It shows that the American writers are getting into the swing of things, and it was an enjoyable 40 minutes.
   The reduction of 19 minutes from the original means many elements were omitted, but I think I am biased when I say I enjoyed this story more than last week’s, which was a fully original American-penned script.
   For UK fans, it was a remake of the first episode of the second series written by Matthew Graham, which guest-starred Marc Warren as Tony Crane, Yasmin Bannerman as Eve, and Kevin McNally (sometimes credited as Kevin R. McNally) as Det Supt Harry Woolf. Chris Bowers, less well known in the US context than Warren, played Crane, New York-based actress Kerry Bishé took the Eve role (consequently, being played by a Caucasian, the references to the mixed relationship were omitted), while Harry Woolf was, surprisingly, played by former US senator Fred Thompson (usually credited as Fred Dalton Thompson).
   I wonder if the Senator knows of the fate of the original Harry Woolf. Let’s say it doesn’t quite follow the DA Arthur Branch path.
   You may or may not agree with Thompson’s politics, but I always thought he was a fine actor.
   The dialogue was similar to the original’s (I can still hear Warren say, ‘Your DI Tyler thinks he’s from the future’), especially the scene after Crane is arrested, though there was less interplay between Sam and Gene. And that’s where this remake of the ninth episode falls over: a lot of time is given to the Sam–Ray conflict and to Annie investigating on Sam’s behalf when a restraining order is issued against him. The original was superior on most counts.
   In 2007, Graham played on the contrast between the two men’s policing methods, but only after the first series set it up so well. Stateside, the Sam–Gene relationship is markedly different, and Sam spends as much time at odds with Ray Carling than he does with his superior. (In fact, for inexplicable reasons, Michael Imperioli—US Ray—gives a VO as the episode starts.) This may be to do with Harvey Keitel’s age and the father-figure approach has been creeping in gradually over the course of the US remake.
   One nice touch was Keitel reading a newspaper clipping with the headline ‘Rogue lieutenant’, which surely was a tribute to his 1992 film, Bad Lieutenant.
   It was still a very good episode (and could only be less well considered when compared with the original), and probably because I was spending it watching for the differences, I didn’t mind that there was no advance of the Aries Project storyline established a few weeks back.
   The original episode’s first minute and a half, as British viewers saw it, is below.

And the second series’ trailer, in which one can hear Warren’s line:

Triangle finally decided to show the Republican National Convention in St Paul tonight, with a three-hour coverage ex-PBS.
   It plans to have two more nights, which will equal the coverage that it gave to the DNC.
   From a marketing point-of-view, the Dems do have the campaign better coordinated, opting for a smaller space on the first two nights so empty seats were not visible. Typographically and design-wise, and in the use of the background screen, the Democratic Party appeared right.
   However, speech-wise, this first full night for the Republicans showed a lesser inclination to rely on slogans and style, instead playing to their candidate’s strengths—principally his military service and his record in the Senate.
   There is truth to the claims that Sen. McCain bridged gaps, because this same willingness to cross the floor to get a better bipartisan outcome was used by the current president to attack him in 2004.
   But some division was also revealed as the crowd went silent on mentions about immigration and global warming, two topics that seem to be sore points with those attending.
   The First Lady’s speech was expectedly ladylike, and the President, as I have heard him on other occasions, especially outside the US, never fumbled a single word.
   One has to wonder, however, whether the President’s cameo appearance helped promote the Republican Party or whether it reiterated for some viewers the party connection between him and Sen. McCain.
   Reminders of the party’s military support were frequent, asking former POWs and veterans to stand up in the hall, including former president George Bush, who was there with his wife Barbara and daughter Dorothy.
   One early speaker, Tommy Espinoza, emphasized faith to appeal to the Christian crowd, and to Hispanic voters.
   Certainly the follow-ups from the presidential video kept pushing the idea of reform, distancing McCain in the same way the Gore campaign attempted to distance itself from the Clinton years in 2000.
   Criticism was veiled but it was present, and that must be one of the tough things confronting the Republican Party in the conference.
   Strongest speaker of the night was easily former senator Fred Thompson, who is probably a more skilled orator than Sen. McCain; and it was probably from then that the audience began to shift into high gear.
   What a pity for the party that he was the penultimate speaker of the night, then.
   He appealed to the audience when he claimed that Sen. Obama’s promises of tax reform would leave Americans worse off.
   In one of the better quotes that I have heard from both sides so far, Thompson said, ‘Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases.
   ‘They tell you they are not going to tax your family.
   ‘No, they’re just going to tax “businesses”! So unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline, or unless you get a pay cheque from a big or a small business, don’t worry: it’s not going to affect you!’
   Smaller but clever bits included his mentioning Alaska as the biggest state in the union which, of course, in area terms, it is, to help Gov. Sarah Palin.
   Unsurprisingly, Sen. Joseph Lieberman spoke in support of Sen. McCain, knowing that he was not that far away from having been made the vice-presidential candidate, if it had not been a potential revolt due to his pro-choice stance.
   I imagine we will hear Mrs McCain speak on the next night, and it will be interesting to compare her speech with what Mrs Obama delivered last week. I thought Mrs Obama did very well (a couple of points off for the use of the fist in the “fighting talk” moments that looked a bit forced) and showed herself to be a dynamic, resourceful woman. I would assume that Cindy McCain, who certainly looked the part clothing-wise tonight, will focus more on the family side of things.
   I’m glad we are getting more balance on our TV screens.
   National Radio, meanwhile, as as balanced with its coverage tonight on its 6 p.m. programme as it was with the Democrats’, though it did devote some extra time to covering Gov. Palin’s pregnant, unmarried daughter and her hiring a lawyer to defend charges against allegations she attempted to influence the firing of her former brother-in-law. Still, it was all good for news junkies like me, and yesterday’s imbalance seems to have been redressed.

What was your reaction to the results of the Iowa caucuses?  

Total surprise. I thought I wouldn’t care but I do. Last time, the Democrats had a clear front-runner in the form of Sen. John Kerry and I found that sparked a greater interest for me, to see how he would fare against President Bush. This time, the interest comes from how unpredictable the fight is.
   I would not have predicted Obama, Edwards and Clinton for the Dems, and I would not have predicted Huckabee, Romney and Thompson for the GOP.
   Go back two years and most of my GOP friends were pessimistic because the only candidates they could foresee were John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Others, perhaps prescient, said there would be a surprise candidate that must emerge closer to the end of 2007. They were right.
   I thought Fred Thompson might have been that man but there certainly has been a lot of attention surrounding Gov. Huckabee. That momentum continued.
   Among my Democrat friends, the hope a few years back was that Al Gore would consider running. Back in 2004 I had good friends who felt Edwards supported their values more and were disappointed that Sen. Kerry emerged as the front-runner in Iowa. Through 2007 I had next to no Democratic friends who felt Sen. Clinton was right for them.
   I am glad the usual rule of “who spends the most wins” did not apply for either party here. It is another example of branding: a good consistent brand that taps in to the consciousness can outweigh huge spends. And that’s something I hope will buoy smaller parties in New Zealand as we face our General Election this year.
   Now that the Iowa caucus item is over, the BBC is running a Britney Spears–K. Fed. story.

Hillary Clinton has upset over the anti-Obama comments made by one of her reps.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iviufLueJCRqiUapUAxXQ3yACUqAD8THFBOG0

So he’s gone from her campaign.
   There are two interpretations:

• if you mess with Hillary over expressing your own free will, then the Patriot Act is going to look like a walk in the park;
• Barack Obama is her choice for running-mate. So leave the man alone.

   And a Clinton–Obama ticket is going to be hard to beat in marketing terms because both candidates have had a huge MSM build-up.
   Who does the GOP have? Romney–Huckabee? Now that I say it, it sounds pretty good, but it also sounds like it belongs to an episode of Bewitched as a rival agency to McMahon & Tate. Damn, Obama is just an exotic surname in an age of internationalism. A marketer’s dream.
   Thompson and another yet-to-emerge Law & Order cast member? Somehow, I think we won’t see FDT in the vernacular with Fred polling so low in New Hampshire—except maybe as a typo when someone is trying to type FDR.
   Giuliani and someone that the Democrats will rip into? McCain and … um … well, heck, just McCain?
   We are talking a lot of lost ground in terms of publicity here for the Republican Party. It needs to wake up and stand united, and with someone very, very credible that will beat the Democrats on substance—then brand it all correctly.

If I was an American and part of the anti-war movement, I would be pretty pissed and wonder who the heck would actually get the boys and girls home from Iraq. These are excerpts from the latest Democratic telecast or debate, from what I understand.
   We all know the dangers of quoting out of context, so if anyone has the full transcript, please feed in a comment and I’ll make sure it’s linked. I am always suspicious of any message with the words Rush Limbaugh in it.

Tim Russert: Senator Obama, will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, that there will be no troops, US troops in Iraq?
Barack Obama: I think it’s hard to project four years from now. I think it would be irresponsible. We don’t know what contingencies will be out there.

Rush Limbaugh: Senator Clinton, you have said that you will not pledge to have all troops out by the end of your first term, 2013. Why not?
Hillary Clinton: It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting. You know, we do not know, walking into the White House in January 2009, what we’re going to find.

Rush Limbaugh: Senator Edwards, will you commit that at the end of your first term, 2013, that all US troops will be out of Iraq?
John Edwards: I cannot make that commitment.

   Remember, folks, a lot of the Democratic candidates voted for the war in Iraq, and they’re still for it, it seems. I could have sworn that only a few weeks ago, the Senator from New York pledged to have US troops back.
   Maybe it was all conditional: it’s hard to tell with sound bites in the media. But these little nuggets will be enough for some.
   I can bet that the conservative media are rubbing their hands in glee over another chance to say, ‘Flip flop,’ regardless of whether any of the leading Democratic candidates for the White House have actually changed their positions.
   Whatever the case, Iraq could be set to be another US base as Germany, Okinawa and South Korea are, regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat gets in to the White House.
   And it makes candidates like Fred Thompson look pretty good: I’ll stay the course, but I’ll drag the Frenchies in. Darn that Arthur Branch and that straight-up Tennessee image.

Fred Thompson announced his candidacy for President of the United States, on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show a few nights ago.
   A great analysis appears in the Murdoch Press, where the conclusion is that the former senator from Tennessee stands a good chance, not because of his political views (closer to those of Sen. John McCain than his other opponents), but because he is a celebrity who looks the part.
   The Tonight Show audience in Los Angeles was delighted with Mr Thompson’s announcement, though it was noticeably silent when the Iraq war was discussed.
   Applause returned when Thompson noted that the United States had spilled a lot of blood for other nations’ freedom, an idea that still has resonance in that nation.
   This shows the division that must come in the US: a country known for defending and promoting freedom, yet tired of sacrificing its own in a war that its own President warned would be a lengthy, tiresome fight when he was campaigning in 2004. Yet Americans do have their pride in their history and what they stand for. And rightly so.
   For those torn between a pro-war and an anti-war position, which the one Tonight Show audience seemed to demonstrate, Thompson may offer a third way. Toward the end of his interview, he hinted that the War on Terror, under him, would have more allies: he would try to unite all the good guys against the bad guys. France was a powerful example, as Thompson cited how Nicolas Sarkozy, before his win in the Presidential Election there, came to the US to meet President Bush. He returned to France saying that he would be more pro-American. The French elected him.
   Sarkozy’s win wasn’t anywhere near that simplistic, but in the age of sound bites and people getting their news from late-night talk shows, it was a skilful move. In Thompson-speak, it means: let me get other countries involved so we don’t have to sacrifice as many of our boys and girls.
   It is a tricky third position to be in, but it may appeal to some voters who feel that the pull-out position of Sens. Clinton and Obama is unpatriotic at worst or risky at best. There is always a difficult ‘What if?’ that comes from any withdrawal, especially given that the US still holds the peace together in Korea with its base there, and maintained a lot of troops in West Germany during the Cold War—so why not the Middle East? Those who are internationalists may see a point. It will definitely appeal to the pro-war brigade.
   The staunch members of the anti-war brigade will not welcome Thompson, regardless of a third, intermediate solution.
   Nevertheless, this tact highlighted several things about Thompson: he is a gifted actor and once he was a skilled lawyer. (Lawyer-haters might not have a choice this time around: Clinton, Obama, Romney, Edwards and Giuliani all have practised law.) He has an image that has been fuelled by his Hollywood appearances. A southern accent makes one look down-home—and his choice of URL, fred08.com, also looks very personal. He knows how to use his words, and to use them well. All these ingredients make him a powerful opponent to the Democrats.

Now that Fred Thompson is hinting at a bid for the presidency, and the Al Gore rumours won’t go away, I am getting the impression that a movie or TV career is necessary for the position. Thompson stands a good chance as he has actually played the President on film, which even Ronald Reagan didn’t do. In which case, if Art. II, s. 1 of the Constitution is ever changed, the Governator will make a bid. You need to change the age and 14-year residency requirement as well as that birth thing. And I will run. I have more hair, anyway, and in such circumstances, only Dwight D. Eisenhower could have beaten me.

When I think about my career with fingers in different pies, it’s not that unusual. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson of Tennessee, whom Americans will know from Law & Order and whom most of us foreigners know from Die Hard 2, could hold down representing his state and plain representin’ on TV and film.
   I kept saying that Republicans might find a candidate who is well known. Could it be Mr Thompson? More people have seen him than Sen. McCain. Only former mayor Giuliani has a higher profile.
   But all these guys do not have much hair.
   Americans always have trouble voting for someone who has less hair than his opponent, whether for a presidential, senatorial or congressional race (there are some exceptions, of course). You can be black or female, just not bald.
   “Hat tip” to Dox² for the video below.